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Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Students estimated an outline of a 4 leaf clover of marshmallows. I liked how students saw symmetry and used that to their advantage. Below a student counted 21, multiplied it by 3 for the total, and then subtracted 21 because the question was how many marshmallows to COMPLETE the outline.

My colleague Ms. Demailly and I were concerned at understanding between infinite, one solution (namely zero) and no solution. The FAL introduces it with always true, sometimes true, or never true. The whiteboarding at the beginning took a bit of time though I believe it established the difference between guessing and checking an equation and solving it algebraically. Students folded their posters in thirds, and labeled the categories. Some thought 4x+1=3 was always true and peers were quick to point out that in the previous slide they had given a value of x that made the equation false. So, when they made it true, x was equal to 0.5 or 1/2.

Reviewing solving an equation. Making the jump from 2 divided by 4 being 0.5 is more prevalent that understanding 2/4 can be simplified and is equal to 1/2.

Students took turns offering where a card would go, listening to group members agreeing or disagreeing, and then pasting it on when they agreed and writing an explanation.

Students watched intently as explanations were written.

In accelerated students factored a quadratic and used the Zero Product Property, as well as confirming it with the quadratic equation they were introduced to yesterday.